Gift-Wrapped Governesses: Christmas at Blackhaven Castle / Governess to Christmas Bride / Duchess by Christmas

‘Above Miss Moorland,’ Gareth screeched. ‘Then we can all give her a kiss.’

‘Above Papa,’ Terence amended. ‘Then she could give him one.’ His oldest son was already counting as he walked over with the mistletoe.

‘Twelve berries. Twelve kisses. You can have the first one, Papa.’

A vibrant red blush crept up Lady Seraphina’s cheeks, but with three boys baying for a kiss Trey felt it easier to do so. He had meant to place a light peck on her cheek, just a small token to fulfil an expected duty, but he found the soft fullness of her mouth instead and his world exploded.

She felt his finger against her cheek, light as air, question in the last second before his lips slanted against hers, the full force of an unexpected magic making her press in. Trey Stanford was hers for this moment under a tree laden with Christmas and in a world of colour, the taste of him strong and real, his fingers at her nape, the shape of his body full down the front of hers, as a deep pain of need entwined itself into all the corners of her heart. He was neither careful nor gentle nor calm. He was masculine fervour tempered with steel, a man who knew his way around a woman and taking the chance of appetite even with his three children watching on.

Seraphina was breathless when he broke away. Kissing was nothing like she had heard it to be: tepid, shallow and lukewarm. It was hot and ardent and fierce, the meeting of souls through a joining of spirit, a giving and a taking. As amazement bloomed she heard the shouts of the boys and David plucked one berry and threw it in the fire. It sizzled against the embers, a slight puff of smoke and then gone.

When she chanced a quick look at the duke, he seemed unaffected by all that had just happened as he took the mistletoe and placed it above the door-well a good few feet away. He did not look in her direction once.

‘Aunt Margaret and Uncle Gordon should arrive tomorrow. We will surprise them beneath it.’ His voice was even and mellow.

Gareth screwed up his face. ‘No, they are too old to kiss, Papa.’

‘No one is ever too old, my lad. You’ll find that out one day.’

All the boys laughed as Melusine barked, chasing her damaged tail around and around until she caught it, teeth clamped in dark red hair. She had been a quiet dog until she had come to Blackhaven, slinking around beneath the anger of Seth Moreton and the distant haughtiness of the Moreton servants. Here she hardly ever stopped, following the boys from room to room.

The kinder face of chaos, she thought, remembering Trey Stanford’s words about her dog. The Christmas pies Mrs Thomas had made were still warm and the smell of spiced ale drifted in from the kitchen.

Last year she had been alone all of the day, her father asleep with a headache that he had acquired through a late night of gambling and the only food that was special a cake procured a good month before the season began. She had stood at the window of the Moreton town house overlooking the park and thought that she had never been as lonely.

This year the joy of the season shone on the boys’ faces, the decorations they had spent all morning fashioning bright and festive.

And she had been kissed. Her first ever. The throb of it still covered her lips, though she did not dare lift her fingers to touch them in case the duke noticed.

Her glance went to the mistletoe surreptitiously. Eleven berries left! Eleven kisses left! The thought made her blood rush fast.

Trey saddled his horse and rode across the frozen afternoon whiteness towards the river, the same place he often went when he needed to think, the gnarled avenue of bare brown oaks both peaceful and ancient.

He should not have kissed Lady Seraphina, should not have allowed such a thing to happen because now it was all that he could think of, her softness and her warmth and the startling force of energy that had passed between them unbidden.

‘God help me!’ His words to the grey and leaden sky as the consequences of such action unfolded in his head. He wanted to feel again what he just had, the ache of something other than the indifference and inertia that had hounded him for so long in his marriage to Catherine. He had never loved nor even liked his wife. A marriage arranged by his parents and hers to amalgamate the lands around Blackhaven into one solid and powerful block. When he looked to the horizon in every direction the soil was his—paid for in deceit and sham and loneliness.

Catherine had been unfaithful from the first month of their marriage and he should have left then, but David was already on the way and there was some honour in him that he could not just sever.

He had gone to Europe the following year and stayed there until the night Terence was conceived. Gareth was the child of one of her many other lovers when all relations between them had broken down, but he had never told anyone this and raised the boy as his own.

Secrets. How they destroyed one with the bile of anger and disappointment.

And now more secrets, dangerous ones with the weight of the law behind them and a man who was after his own scrambled retribution. Seraphina Moreton would need to be protected and she would require help to win against such a one as the Earl of Cresswell. Her fragility required armour and someone fighting in her corner who did not obey the rules.

Like him.

But how? The kiss under the mistletoe was a start because she must have felt exactly as he did. She had not met his eyes after it and he had not wished to find hers. Some things were better left for the quiet chance of talking later, so that she was not frightened again as she had been in the lurid attempts on her person by Ralph Bonnington.

Promise beat under his musings. He wanted her beneath him, knowing the curves of her body and the scent of her womanhood.

There had been other women since Catherine, he could not deny it. The sweet opiate of forgetfulness was easily procured, even with a ruined face.

But not for a while. It had been months since he had left the county of Essex and he had never liked to bed the local women. Too close to home. Too complicated.

Until now. Until a woman installed in the very centre of his world had whet with a single kiss an appetite long dulled under a sprig of mistletoe and the watchful eyes of his sons.

God in heaven. He swore again, but this time he laughed too. He felt alive again, interested, the ennui that had plagued him for so many years lifted.

‘Seraphina.’ He shouted her name and heard his voice echoed back to him through the barren outcrop of rock and muffled in the deep and thick December snow. It had the ring of salvation.

Mrs Thomas knocked on her door in the afternoon and she held a candle encased in glass because the skies had darkened and rain was threatening.

‘The master asked me to show you the bolts of fabric in the attic, Miss Moorland. He said you might choose some material for a Christmas gown and if we are to have any hope of finishing it we would be best to get on to it as soon as we can.’

The thought crossed Seraphina’s mind that Lord Blackhaven might be regretting his earlier kiss and allowing her some recompense in return for it. She swallowed down such a conclusion and tried to take stock of her situation.

‘I haven’t the means to pay you for the work, Mrs Thomas, and I am not certain yet of the amount of my wages.’

‘Oh, never mind that,’ the housekeeper returned softly. ‘The boys are happier than I have seen them in a long while and that is the best payment I could ever receive. Now, come along and we will see what we can find.’

Ten minutes later Seraphina felt as though she were in some Aladdin’s cave, myriad rolls of fabric leaning against the walls, some still bound in tissue paper but many partly unravelled as if the person who owned them had just been there deciding on her choice of colour.

‘Lady Stanford was a woman who liked a great deal of selection. She was always buying from the travelling salesmen or the gypsies, as well as getting fabric sent up from London. Velvet, as you can see, was a special favourite of hers, and lace. The Brussels lace here cost a right fortune, I can tell you.’

‘Then perhaps I should look at something less costly?’

‘And have the moths burrow their way through this? Nay, the hue will show up the depth in the gold velvet of the gown and would suit the shade of your hair. If we do not cut into it now, it could stay unused for another decade and by that time there would be nothing of it left at all. Save dust. Such a waste.’

Unravelling the bolt, Seraphina felt her breath hitch. Catherine Blackhaven’s taste in fabric was unparalleled and she had rarely seen lace so fine. Still, tempting as the gift was, she wondered at her own ability to pay back the cost of it.

‘The duke said you could have your choice, Miss Moorland. Were it to be mine, I should most certainly select these ones.’ The Brussels lace was in her left hand and the golden velvet in the right.

Without waiting for a reply, she bound the length around Seraphina’s waist. ‘If the skirt was full and the bodice tighter, you could use the lace here and here. Lady Catherine always favoured a scandalously low décolletage, but on you we could fashion a gown in a manner that was more classical.’

Mrs Thomas’s words gave her an opening. ‘The duke’s late wife was a beautiful woman. I saw her in London a few times with my mother.’

‘And the beauty went to her head until it was all that she could think of. It was why the master was in Europe for so long, with a bride who cared for nothing save herself.’

‘But the children?’

As if catching sense, Mrs Thomas shook her head. ‘I am the housekeeper, Miss Moorland, and I should remember my place.’ Winding back the gold so that even more of the colour was on show, she nodded sagely. ‘Blackhaven Castle needs laughter and joy again and if the cost of that is a few yards of fabric, then it comes cheap.’

When Mrs Thomas undid the handles on a sewing bag she had placed on the floor, Seraphina saw scissors, pins and thread, and the promise of a gown that was neither too big nor too tight overcame reticence. With real anticipation she slipped off her old dress and stood in her many-times-patched chemise and petticoats as the measuring and fitting began in earnest.

The wind had died down and the rain had held off, though the clouds were thick and dark above as Seraphina sat on a wooden bench in the ornate inner gardens of Blackhaven as the evening was about to fall.

Reaching out to the bare wood of a bush beside her, she smiled as she touched the vibrant orange of a rosehip, the only colour besides green and black and grey in the snow-tossed square. It was good to be outside at the end of a long and noisy day, the silence of the place welcomed as she tucked her chin into the worsted wool of her borrowed cape.